Korea set to bolster nuclear security

By Park Si-soo

Today marks D-100 of the second Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Seoul on March 26 and 27.

Following the inaugural 2010 meeting in Washington, it will put together more than 50 heads of state and representatives of international organizations, the biggest diplomatic event ever held on Korean soil.

Invited countries and organizations include the United States, China, Japan, Russia, the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Interpol and the European Union.

The government is making a last-minute effort to draw a clear picture of practical measures which, if implemented properly, will make for a world free of nuclear terrorism. The finalized agenda and schedule will be made by February.

Seoul has added the security of radioactive materials used in people’s daily lives to the meeting’s agenda in a move to amplify the global impact.

Officials said the government expects the summit to put additional pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program.

“Keeping terrorists away from nuclear materials is as important as banning problematic countries from having nuclear weapons,” President Lee Myung-bak said in a meeting with members of an advisory group for the summit on Nov. 29. “I believe the Seoul summit will make a meaningful footstep in preventing nuclear terrorism.”

The advisory group is comprised of 15 veteran diplomatic figures at home and abroad. They will offer a wide range of suggestions about nuclear terrorism and security to Lee until March while promoting the event through publications and media interviews.

“Hosting the Nuclear Security Summit, along with the 2010 Seoul G20 Summit, is evidence that Korea is globally acknowledged as a country with strong diplomatic power,” said Han Choong-hee, Seoul’s deputy negotiator for the meeting. “At the same time, it will test the country’s capability of handling issues that have a far-reaching impact around the globe.”

Actual threat

Public skepticism runs high toward the possibility of nuclear terrorism.

“I don’t think it’s possible for terrorists to get their hands on weapon-level nuclear materials since they are placed in safe locations and under intense supervision,” said Park Myung-hwan, an office worker in his early 30s.

Experts hope Park’s thought are reality but they say nuclear terrorism is a constant possibility.

“The possibility for a nuclear terrorist act to happen may be less than 1 percent, but the success rate of the terrorists achieving the goals with that act amounts to 99 percent,” said Oh Myung, a member of the advisory group and former minister of science and technology, in an interview.

“If weapons-level nuclear materials or highly-enriched uranium (HEU) fall into the hands of terrorists, it could give them the easiest but the most threatening means of terrorism. Illegal seizures of nuclear materials and their illegal transactions are being reported much more than we think.”

Kim Bong-hyun, Korea’s sherpa for the summit whose role is pre-arranging the agenda to be discussed during the meeting, echoed the view.

“The likelihood of nuclear terrorism is very low. Once it happens, however, the consequences defy imagination,” Kim said. “The threat of nuclear terrorism could be everywhere.”

The number of attempts to steal atomic material enriched to the level of nuclear weapons in the security zone has increased in recent years.

According to the Illicit Trafficking Database of the IAEA, more than 2,000 cases of illegal trafficking, theft or loss of nuclear and radiological materials have been reported around the world from 1993 to 2011, and of those around 60 percent have not been recovered. There were also 500 cases of theft of highly enriched uranium, which could be used in nuclear weapons.

Mohammed ElBaradei said in 2006 when head of the IAEA that there were clear signs that terrorists had attempted to get their hands on nuclear materials.

“There was an attempt to steal highly enriched uranium from a nuclear depot in South Africa, which was fortunately foiled,” Kim said.

In November 2007, a nuclear site in South Africa was infiltrated by two groups of armed gunmen. The nuclear plant in Pelindaba was the home to hundreds of pounds of weapons grade uranium left over from the African country’s nuclear weapons program.

It is still unclear why they raided the facility and what materials they got away with. But experts describe the case as a wake-up call over the vulnerability of nuclear facilities.

Some of the stolen material is suspected of having been used for assassinations.

In November 2006, a former spy for the Soviet Union’s intelligence agency was poisoned to death in London. A tiny amount of polonium-210 was found in his body, a rare case demonstrating the use of atomic material for homicide, British investigators said.

Security of radioactivity

World leaders at the Seoul nuclear summit will discuss how to ensure the safety and security of radioactive materials widely used in people’s daily lives. This is to induce more active participation of countries without HEU, said the summit’s preparatory secretariat.

“Terrorism using nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium would have a massive impact, but the probability is low,” a ranking secretariat official said. “Terrorism using radioactive materials, widely used in hospitals, would have a smaller impact but the probability is high.”

Another new item on the agenda will be how to create synergy effects between nuclear security and nuclear power safety in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the official said.

“Exposure of low-enriched uranium and other low-level radioactive material to the public could pose a great health risk,” he said. “Also as we learned through the Japanese nuclear crisis in March, the safety of nuclear power stations is as important as nuclear security.”

He added low-enriched uranium is widely used in the medical industry worldwide, but its control is “careless.”

“I hope the Seoul meeting draws a global consensus to enhance security guidelines on the use of low-enriched uranium and nuclear power plants,” the official said.

Seoul also expects the summit to put additional pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program.

“We expect many countries to give up their highly enriched uranium at the summit next year,” Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said in a speech earlier this week. “This could also put considerable pressure on North Korea.”

Uranium, if highly enriched, can be used to build atomic bombs. North Korea claims its uranium enrichment program (UEP) is aimed at generating electricity but the international community suspects it is part of a nuclear weapons program.

Experts say one of the most important achievements of the first nuclear summit in Washington last year was Ukraine’s decision to eliminate all of the HEU on its soil by 2012. An estimated 20 countries have eliminated all of their HEU in recent years. Nations still possessing HEU include Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Mexico.

Seoul’s foreign ministry said North Korea has yet to decide whether to participate in the summit. President Lee openly invited North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in two separate speeches in March and August.

Arms reduction race

The Seoul summit will come amid an accelerating reduction of nuclear weapons.

The United States, as predicted in the 2009 pledge by Barack Obama, is leading the move. This is expected to put pressure on other nuclear-armed nations to follow suit.

It is estimated that around 1,600 tons of highly enriched uranium and 500 tons of plutonium are currently stored in locations around the world.

In October, the U.S. government dismantled a giant yet outdated nuclear bomb, the B-53, which was powerful enough to wipe out an entire metropolitan area.

“It’s significant in the sense that it’s the last of the multi-megaton weapons that the nuclear powers used to build during the height of the Cold War,” Hans Kirstensen of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) said in an interview. “This is the end of the era of these monster weapons.”

Experts said the dismantlement should be a landmark declaring the end of the nuclear arms race. But they said the world still has a long way to go to become a nuclear-free planet.

Last May, the United States revealed for the first time the actual size of its nuclear stockpile ㅡ a total of 5,113 warheads as of Sept. 30, 2009, the Pentagon announced. That figure ㅡ a 75 percent reduction from 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell ㅡ included active warheads ready for deployment at short notice, as well as “inactive” warheads maintained at a depot in “non-operational status.”

Under a new strategic arms limitation treaty, agreed in April last year, the United States and Russia ㅡ which hold nearly all the world’s nuclear weapons ㅡ pledged to reduce their arsenals to 1,550 warheads each.

Russia is estimated to have around 2,800 nuclear warheads, according to the FAS.

France is believed to have the third most nuclear warheads with 300, followed by China with 180, Britain with 160, Israel with 80, Pakistan and India each with 60, and North Korea with 10, according to the federation.

Of them, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are not members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which means the international nuclear watchdog is off-limits to those countries and unable to ensure whether their nuclear weapons are controlled properly.